The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1887-09-09
TALMAGE's SERMON.
"Woman's Opportunity Thoughts
Suggested BY Its Study.
1hc Home the Realm Wherein Shs
Reigns-Musculine Women and
E6emInate Men Discussed in
Their Domestic Relations.

Rev. 7. De Witt Talmage took for the
subject of his sixth sermon at ''The Hamp-
tons" ''Woman's Opportunity" his text
being:
So God created man in his own IMAGE In the
image of God created he him: male and female
created he them.-Genesis l., E..
In other words, God. who can make no
mistake, made man and woman for a spe-
cific work, and to move in particular
spheres-man to be regnant in his realm.
woman TO be dominant in hers. The bound
airy line between Italy and Switzerland.
between England and Scotland, is not
more thoroughly marked than this dis
tinction between the empire masculine and
the empire feminine. So entirely dissirn-
liar are the fields to which God called them
that YOU can no more compare them than
you can oxygen and hydrogen, water and
grass, trees and stars. All this talk about
the superiority of one sex to the other sex
Is an everlasting waste of ink and speech.
A ieweler may have scale so delicate
that he can weigh the dust of diamonds.
but where are the scales sodelicste that you
can weigh them in affection against aifec-
tom, sentiment against sentiment, thought
against thought, soul against soul, n mans
come out with your stereotyped remark,
the man is superior to woman in intellect:
and then / oren on NV desk the swarthy.
iron typed. thunder-bolted writings of
Harriet Martineau, and Elizabeth Brown
ing, and George Eliot. You come on
with your stereotvped remark about
woman's superiority to man in the item OF
affection, but ask YOU where was there
~ ..t tl,on in, Iatsn fha
disciple, and Robert McCheyne. the
Scotchman, and John Summerfeld, the
Methodist. and Henry Martin, the mis-
sionary. The hearts of those men were so
large, that after You had rolled
into them two hemispheres, there
was room still left to marshal
the hosts of Heaven and set up the throne
of the eternal Jehovah. I deny to man
the throne intellectual. l deny to woman
the throne affectional. No human phrases
ology will ever define the spheres, while
there is an intuition by which we know
when a man is in his realm, and when a
woman is in her realm, and when either of
them is out of it. No bungling legislature
ought to attempt to make a definition or
to say: "This is the line and that is the
line"
vote she ought to vote, and that if man
wants to embroider and keep house he
ought to be allowed to embroder and keep
house. There are masculine women and
effeminate men. NY theory is that you
have no right to interfere with any ones
doing any thing that is righteous. AL
bany and Washington might as well de-
cree by legislation how high brown
fhr-oS IA Gx- bnN
should swim. as to try to seek out the
height or the depth of woman's
duty. The question of capacity
will settle finally the whole CUES
ton, the whole subject. When
woman is prepared to preach. she will
preach, and neither conference nor presby
terry can hinder her. When a woman is
prepared to move in highest commercial
spheres she will have great influence on
the exchange, and no boards of trade can
hinder her. / want woman to understand
that heart and brain can overly any bar
rier that politicians may set up, and that
nothing can keep her back or keep her
down but the question of incapacity.
There are women, know, OF most unde-
srable nature, who wander up and down
the CONTEMPLATING no homes of their
ing about their rights, and we know very
well that they themselves are fit neither
to vote nor to keep house. Their mission
seems to be to humiliate the two sexes at
the thought of what any of us might be-
come. No one would want to live under
the laws that such women would enact. or
to have cast upon society the children
that such a woman would raise. But l
CHI oh hot f1,al
rights that woman can own she al
ready has in her possession: that her posi-
ton in this country at this time is not one
of ccmmiseration, but one of cougratula-
ton; that the grandeur and power of her
realm have never yet been appreciated;
that she sits to-day on throne SO high
that all the thrones of earth piled on top
of each other would not make for her
foo.stool. Here is the platform on which
she stands. Away down below 1t are the
ballot-box and the congressional as
semblage and the legislative hall. Women
always have voted and ALWAYS will vote.
Our great-grandfathers thought they We're
by their votes putting Washington into
the presidential chair. No. His mother,
by the principles she taught him. and by
the habits she inculcated made him Presi-
dent. 1t was Christian mothers hand
dropping tie ballot when Lord Bacon
write, and Newton philosophical,
and Alfred the Great governed,
and Jonathan Edwards Numbered of
Judgment to come. How many men there
have been in high political station who
would have been insufficient to stand the
test to which their moral principle was put
had it not been for a wife's voice that en-
couraged them to do right, and a wife's
PRAYER that sounded louder than the
clemoF of partisanship: Why, my friends.
the right of suffrage, as we men exercise
it, seems 10 be feeble thing. You,
Christian man, come up to the ballot-box
and you drop your vote. Right after you
comes libertine. or sot-the offscouring
of the street-and ne drops his vote: and
his vote counteracts yours. But if in the
quiet of home life a daughter by her
Christian demeanor, a wife by her in
dustry, mother by her faithfulness. casts
a vote in the right direction, then nothing
can resist it, and the influence of that vote
will throb throU Oh the eternities.
Nv chief anxiety then, is not that wom-
an have other rights accorded her, but
that she, by the grace of God, rise up to
the appreciation of the glorious rights she
already possesses. This morning l shall
oniy have time to speak of one grand and
ell absorbing right that every woman has,
and that is to make home happy. That
realm no one has ever disputed with her,
Men may come home at noon or at night,
and they tarry comparatively little
while: but she all day long governs il.
beauties if, sanctifies il. 1t is within her
power to make it the most attractive place
on earth. 1t is the only calm harbor in
this outside world, and the business world
rs a long scene of jostle and contention.
The man who has a dollar struggles to